Philip Eden wrote:
For those who like to view Britain's weather through the flawed
prism of the NAO index, that index during March was negative,
very very negative, more negative even than any calendar month
since Feb 1986.

And yet there was much mobility over the Atlantic Ocean and
western Europe south of latitude 50 degN, and this mobility
penetrated across the whole of the British Isles during the second
week of March and again from the 24th onwards, resulting in an
outstandingly wet month in many parts of the UK ... exactly
what one is supposed to get with a -ve NAOi month, right?

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/product..._nh_anim.shtml
a 30 day animation of NH 500 hPa GPH makes interesting viewing
-showing the migration of an anomaly to settle over Greenland.
Looking at animations of tropopause maps available at-
http://www.pa.op.dlr.de/arctic/
show a distinctly warm and weak, highly disorganised polar vortex at
least in the later half of the month with a great glob of sub tropical
air entering right onto the pole,
regards,
david